Ruin

“ And by the texture or composition of the ruin all round I saw that a village had stood there. There are calamities one does not contemplate, when one thinks of time and change. Death, passing away, even ruin, are all the human lot; but one contemplates ruin as brought by kindly ages, coming slowly at last, with lichen and ivy and moss, its harsher aspects all hidden with green, coming with dignity and in due season. ”

“ A ruin is to an edifice what a ghost is to a man.
There was no more gloomy sight than la Tourgue. Before one's eyes was a lofty round tower, standing alone in a corner of the wood, like a malefactor. ”

“ But not for any fancy of mine must you picture ruin any more as something graced with splendour, or as it were an argosy reaching the shores of our day laden with grandeur and dignity out of antiquity. Ruin to-day is not covered with ivy, and has no curious architecture or strange secrets of history, and is not beautiful or romantic at all. It has no tale to tell of old civilizations, not otherwise known, told of by few grey stones. ”

“ It stood there—the great ruin of a vast habitation of men. Building after building, mysterious and broken, corridors, halls, refectories, cells; the dwelling of a faith so alien that I could not reconstruct the life that gave it being. ”

“ Surely a ruin is sacred only for what men did there. We are indeed a headlong race. We keep our ruins behind us. Perhaps that is why we get somewhere. And yet, what beauty blooms flowerlike to the backward gaze! ”

“ He strolled into the royal ruin, stumbling over broken carvings, and into hollows concealed by luminous plants, beneath whose shades dwelt noisome things that wriggled away in the marvelous white light. ”

“ Who ever could look upon such a beautiful ruin without feeling the heart sink, and the mind overshadowed with a solemn darkness, as if conscious of witnessing the still and awful gloom of that disastrous eclipse of reason, which, alas! is so often doomed never to pass away. ”

“ A wreck combats with stormy waves; the moon goes down amid black clouds; on the shore, among the ruins of a temple, sits a Mussulman—a beautiful and thoughtful figure—and surveys the scene. I likewise observe it, and an agreeable shudder passes through me. A vast ruin is better and far more beautiful than a small and an empty happiness. ”

“ Hard by these gravestones of dead years, and forming a part of the ruin which some pains had been taken to render habitable in modern times, were two small dwellings with sunken windows and oaken doors, fast hastening to decay, empty and desolate. ”

“ When the monuments of man decay, ages may sigh over their unreviving relics, but when those of nature are dissolved, others emerge from the ruin in more exulting beauty, as the bird of flame from the ashes of its parent. ”

“ Very beautiful did the ancient ruin look as we took our farewell glance at it, with the warm sun’s rays touching tenderly its gray-toned walls and lightening up their century-gathered gloom, whilst the solemn shadows of pillared recesses and deepset arches lent a mystic glamour to the pile, as though it held some hidden secrets of the past there, not to be revealed to modern mortals, all of which aroused our strongest sympathies, or a feeling close akin thereto—for I know not for certain whether mere inert matter can really arouse human sympathy, though I think it can. ”

“ They are extremely majestic, with their even, pale-red colour, their deep-green drapery, their princely vastness of scale. But presently the tranquil ruin began to swarm like a startled hive. There were plenty of people, if they chose to show themselves. They emerged from crumbling doorways and gaping chambers, with the best conscience in the world; but I know not, after all, why I should bear them a grudge, for they gave me a pretext for wandering about in search of a quiet point of view. ”

“ The plaintive-echoing ruins pour their streams.
Yet here adventurous in the sacred search
Of ancient arts, the delicate of mind,
Curious and modest, from all climes resort,
Grateful society! with these I raise,
The toilsome step up the proud Palatine,
Through spiry cypress groves, and towering pine,
Waving aloft o'er the big ruin's brows,
On numerous arches reared; and frequent stopped,
The sunk ground startles me with dreadful chasm,
Breathing forth darkness from the vast profound
Of aisles and halls, within the mountain's womb. ”

“ Ruin, ruin, ruin, above and below, on the right hand and on the left-ruin, ruin, ruin, everywhere and always, staring at us from every paneless window, looking out at us from every shell-torn wall, glaring at us from every battered door, pillar, and veranda, crouching beneath our feet on every sidewalk. ”

“ Every street, and square, and avenue was choked with shattered ruins, rent from top to bottom; houses, convents, and churches presented the most fearful aspect of ruin; while every second minute a new impetus seemed to be given to the convulsed earth, causing those that remained still perfect to rock and rend. ”

“ It is a still and sequestered spot, and the little ruin clothed in rich ivy, and sheltered by the great old trees with its solemn and holy quiet, in such a resting-place as most mortals would fain repose in when their race is done. ”

“ When we see a ruin of a church, an abbey, a castle, an old manor-house, even of a straw-thatched cottage, we are sad, for we think what they were, beautiful in their several ways, and all having lost much by becoming ruins. ”

“ It is one of the sublimest and most awful spectacles in history—that city in ruins—the earth still trembling, the grim and dauntless soldiery collected amid piles of death and ruin; and in such a time, and such a scene, the multitude sensible not of danger, but of wrong, and rising not to succor, but to revenge—all that should have disarmed a feebler enmity giving fire to theirs ”

“ The house is large, and its style imposing, but time and dissipation, unfailing in their results, have made ineffaceable marks upon it, and it must, in the common course of events, soon be numbered with the things that were. The gloomy mantle of ruin is, already, outspread to envelop it, and its remains, even but now remind one of a human skull, after the flesh has mingled with the earth. ”

“ Standing among us, like some ancient colossal ruin amid the degenerate and more diminutive structures of modern times, its vast proportions magnified by the contrast, he reminded us of those days when there were giants in the land, and we remembered that even then there was none whose prowess could withstand his arm. ”

“ Cities and temples have fallen into decay and ruin. Where the rain washes on crumbled pillars, and sunbeams and shadows play about silent crevice and wall, once was the clamor and tumult of surging human life. ”

“ It is worth while to sit on the rock and look at this ruin—the ruin of an immense monument set up to honour a mortal deified, and to whom sacrifices were offered, who gathered into his own hands all the authority and power of the known world for his own selfish glorification—and think, that at the same time He was born who made Himself of no reputation and took on Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of man—who humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. ”

“ Centuries of dust lie over them. Their bones are crumbled to the dust. Yet in a sense they live still and move among us. Between them and us there lie not only centuries but the great tide of ruin that swept the ancient world away: destroyed it so that the men who came after had to build the house of civilization, stone by stone anew, from the foundation. ”

“ Thus when crime and wo attack and wreck an erring human being, the affections and virtues of one faithfully attached decorate the ruin with alien beauty; and make that pleasant to the eye and heart which otherwise we might turn from as a loathsome spectacle. ”

“ The hot suns of eighteen hundred years have baked and scorched this ruin, which has reverted to a state of nature, bare and golden-brown like a mountain-side, since it has been stripped of its vegetation, the flora which once made it like a virgin forest. ”

“ A ruin, but not quite; for, as the course of a landslip will often tower with great spires and pinnacles of rock and ragged earth that have withstood the pull and onset of the moving hill-side, so here a high sheet of shattered wall, crowned with a cluster of toppling chimneys, stood up stark in the midst of the general overthrow. And there aloft, clinging to the crumbling stack, that might at any moment part, and fling and crush him into the savage ruin below, stood the figure of a solitary man. And the man was my friend of the Parade, Jack Curtice. ”

“ Let no one, then, exclaim against the inutility and folly of that which tends so greatly to elevate man's heart and soul! No; the sacred dust, the venerable ruin, the shattered urn, are not dumb to those who know how to inspire them with feeling and with speech. ”

“ He ran it up eight stories high, however, and two of them still stand, at this day—a colossal mass of brickwork, rent down the centre by earthquakes, and seared and vitrified by the lightnings of an angry God. But the vast ruin will still stand for ages, to shame the puny labors of these modern generations of men. ”

“ A Gothic ruin appears buried in a greater depth of obscurity, to be weighed down and rendered venerable with the hoar of more distant ages, to have been longer mouldering into neglect and oblivion, to be a record and memento of events more wild and alien to our own times, than a Grecian temple. ”

“ Thou art a ruin, but a grand one,—the majestic ruin of a majestic edifice, for knowest thou not that thou wast the temple of God?
When we are weary, even in weariness, God sees the possibility of greatness that may yet take place and be developed and supervene in immortality. ”

“ In some things the ruin is not altogether to be regretted. It has softened certain loathsome details of the charnel facts portrayed, and in other pictures the torment and anguish of the lost souls are no longer so painful as the old painters ascertained them. ”

“ He would ask what religious zeal or frenzy had added to the mad despair and horrors of war? The ruin is unlike any thing that appears recorded in any age; it looks like neither the barbarities of men, nor the judgments of vindictive heaven. There is a waste of desolation, as if caused by fell destroyers, never meaning to return and making but a short period of their rapacity. ”

“ I came to an open space—a mountain of ruin in the midst, announced that some large mosque had occupied the space—and here, scattered about, I saw various articles of luxury and wealth, singed, destroyed—but shewing what they had been in their ruin—jewels, strings of pearls, embroidered robes, rich furs, glittering tapestries, and oriental ornaments, seemed to have been collected here in a pile destined for destruction; but the rain had stopped the havoc midway.
Hours passed, while in this scene of ruin I sought for Raymond. Insurmountable heaps sometimes opposed themselves ”

“ By them the building was suffered to fall into so utter a state of ruin, that no trace even of its foundations is left to proclaim to the stranger who meditates upon the fleeting change of time and creed, that here, for more than three centuries, stood a hallowed fane, from whence at eventide and prime prayers were wafted through the dewy air, where now are only heard the festal sounds of life's more jocund hours. ”

“ A fruitful decrepitude, under which germinates the new life. Little by little the ruin progresses; deep crevices, which are not visible, ramify in the darkness, and internally reduce to powder the venerable structure, which still appears a solid mass without; and suddenly, some fine day, this ancient ensemble of worm-eaten things, of which decaying societies are composed, becomes shapeless, the nails come out, the structure becomes disjointed, and overhangs. ”

“ Shall not commemorate my ruin.
Regret shall be the gravel under foot.
I shall watch for
Slim birds swift of wing
That go where wind and ranks of thunder
Drive the wild processionals of rain. ”

“ I have rarely heard any person complain of the almost total ruin which has befallen so many. All are prepared to undergo still greater sacrifices,—they contemplate and prepare to receive great reverses which it is impossible to avert. ”

“ To bring the roof to the foundation, And bury all which yet distinctly ranges, In heaps and piles of ruin. ”

“ For twelve miles we went climbing on, over an unbroken succession of mounds, and heaps, and hills, of ruin. Tombs and temples, overthrown and prostrate; small fragments of columns, friezes, pediments; great blocks of granite and marble; mouldering arches, grass-grown and decayed; ruin enough to build a spacious city from; lay strewn about us. Sometimes, loose walls, built up from these fragments by the shepherds, came across our path; sometimes, a ditch between two mounds of broken stones, obstructed our progress ”

“ With Notes of Horror wakes her trembling Ear.{7}
Of human Grandeur mark the fleeting Day,
How frail each Purpose, and each Wish how vain!
The strong-built Domes, the cloister’d Fanes decay,
And Ruin hovers round the desert Scene. ”

“ When the house being torn to pieces by the riots of vice is abandoned as no longer habitable, with the foundations undermined, the roof fallen in, the furniture destroyed, and the walls tottering, it is made over to virtue, and she is desired to take possession of the ruin, and make herself comfortable for life. ”